


I couldn't whisper when you needed it shouted (ah, but I'm singing like a bird, 'bout it now)

by Waistcoat35



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: Abandonment Issues Yayyyyy, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Because like it's cap, Began in my notes app at 1am because the ep made me cry again, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pining, Requited Unrequited Love, Spoilers for Episode: s02e03 Redding Weddy, Spoilers for S2E3, The Captain's Name Is Teddy, and repression, because they're both idiots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:27:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27167254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waistcoat35/pseuds/Waistcoat35
Summary: The Captain still hasn't moved on.He might not have to.
Relationships: The Captain/Lieutenant Havers (Ghosts TV 2019)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 127





	I couldn't whisper when you needed it shouted (ah, but I'm singing like a bird, 'bout it now)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [qetbackhonkycat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/qetbackhonkycat/gifts), [wildenessat221b](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildenessat221b/gifts).



> To Ruby, for all of our wonderful conversations. And to Abbsy, for being an absolute treasure. (Their users are in the dedications, please check out their fics <3)

_They are tethered by the same element_  
_that silvers the backs of their eyes, the lodestones that stud_  
_their skulls, or spines, while we wander song-lines, desire-lines,_  
_remake maps, charts, the metal of our words._

_\- MAGNETITE - Matt Merritt_

He is not expecting it, of course. He is not at all expecting it and that, the Captain thinks, has been his undoing. Whenever his past is dredged up again it seems to bring nothing but trouble, but this time it is only brought to himself, which is - a blessing, he supposes, logically, but he hesitates. Selfish, but he hesitates. A burden to bear all together is preferable to a burden to bear alone, in some ways.

The local museum - the small one in the village, barely an information centre, according to Pat, who'd taken his scouts there many moons ago - has proposed to do an exhibition about the house. There have been photographers and archivists popping in every so often, as has the museum curator, hoping to dig up anything they could about the house's history. Alison tells them what she can, based on information from the rest of them - Fanny is, of course, a fountain of knowledge when it comes to her beloved house - but there are some things that she can't tell them without the evidence to back it up, and so that's what is being looked for. 

The attics have been thoroughly trawled for anything that might be put on display, and the curator has been sifting through documents from here and there to find any references to Button House that might be included.

Photographs, too.

That is why he's standing stock still in the hallway, somehow barely noticing when the blasted pigeon flies through him, and just. 

Staring.

He hasn't see this face in eighty years. 

Havers, in the picture, looks just as he remembers. More or less, anyway. He looks just the same in a clinical sense, in the same way he could look at a plant in a textbook and find the real thing and declare them just the same, with no differences at all, and still have it be untrue. The way he could look at the taxidermied fox in the library and know that against a living one the former would never be so clear, so shiny-bright, consigned to being a blur on the edge of his vision, a dull room fixture compared to the focused technicolour of the breathing animal. 

The eyes aren't the same as they were in life. Of course they aren't. There's a brightness that is missing, a shine he can't spot in a photograph. (It's funny, but he sometimes wonders if the shine in those eyes when he looked at them was there when anyone looked at Havers. It is a question he ~~can't~~ ~~won't~~ doesn't want to answer. He buries it.)

But they are still kind, nevertheless. Havers was always kind to him.

He wishes every day that he had deserved it. 

* * *

He stares at the photograph for far, _far_ too long. One of them will notice, surely. But the curator mills about, as do her assistants, and save for the odd curious glance, which he dissuades by pretending to look busy and _oversee the proceedings_ , he manages to avoid any questions from Alison too. Fortunately she can never say too much to him what with people constantly passing through. 

However, all good things must come to an end (he knows that - _intimately_ ) and so when Pat comes to find him for film club he lets himself be dragged off without appearing to protest too much. 

(It's his turn to choose, but for a reason he can't explain he isn't in much of a mood for _Dunkirk_ or _The Rise of Evil_ or any of his usual picks. Not having any other ideas, he swaps his go with Fanny on the condition that she doesn't choose _any of that soppy romance business_. She's not much one for it, hence why he chose her rather than Pat or Kitty or, _God_ forbid, Thomas. Alison's got a trial period on something called the Amazon - he knows better than the others in that he's _mostly_ sure she doesn't mean the rainforest, but other than that he hasn't got a clue. Fanny squints at the screen discerningly as Alison scrolls through the period drama section, and chooses whatever the new instalment of _Downton Abbey_ is at the moment - likely the film one that Alison had complained about having to see with Mike and his parents. 

It is the film, and contrary to Fanny's assumptions it does, in fact, contain _soppy romance business_.

He is not expecting it to be the butler's.

He feels worse at the end.)

He goes to bed with the briefest of goodnights when the credits roll, and he doesn't think about the soft tissue-paper crinkle of the inside of a wrist at his fingertips as he's handed a letter, or the morning newspaper. He doesn't reel back when he steps into the - his - _the_ \- bedroom, because he's standing where someone else stood so long ago, when they were alive and able to open doors and very, very stupid. He doesn't think about how long it's been since those eyes or any looked at him so kindly, as if he were privy to a special joke only the two of them knew, and blink back the burning.

He _doesn't_.

* * *

Everything is a reminder. 

One of the assistants' dimples when he smiles are almost exactly the same. 

Mike's mother visits and she takes her tea the same way, the generous pouring of milk and half a heaped teaspoon of sugar. 

Alison watches a new show with Robin, and the man in it wants to be a vet. 

And none of them know what any of it means. 

He wants to cry, he thinks. He wants to cry and scream and shout because there is something uniquely tragic, in a way that chokes him like an abscess, claws at the inside of his ribcage like a panicked rabbit, about wonderful things being forgotten about when they don't deserve it. Except he hasn't forgotten, he remembers, he is perhaps the last one who does, but he can't say anything. He can't say anything and it's choking him from the inside out and he can't breathe and _Havers' eyes were hazel lighter than his hair and darker than his tea and he had dimples when he smiled and his teeth were arranged a bit awkwardly which he didn't like but I never minded I thought it was sweet and he'd begun veterinary college before the war and once when we were both on leave he took me birding on Hampstead Heath and laughed at something I said and I wanted to kiss him on the lips right there on the hill-_

'You alright, Cap?' He snaps back like a sprung trap - no, like the animal _avoiding_ the trap. It's just Pat, who had begun to reach for his shoulder - he must've been far gone, then, even Pat usually knows not to touch - but has stopped now, a soft look on his face. And he can't have that, can't handle it - he can't be soft, can't falter, being looked at like that makes him feel curiously like some tiny thing pried from its eggshell too soon, too fragile, too open. He has the sudden need to say something, anything, about it - so that he won't be forgotten. 

'His favourite colour was yellow,' he says, almost blurts it in the hurry to get it through with, let the scrutiny pass him by. Pat squints at him - he half hopes to hear a ' _y'wot?'_ for the normality it would restore - but he seems to recognise that this is something important, even if he doesn't know how, and so he just. Nods. And that's it. It's done.

It's done, and nothing happens.

So why does he feel worse?

It's like he gave the information away, parted with it too freely, and in doing so rendered it meaningless. And it will never paint the full picture of the man he is remembering.

* * *

The exhibition is very nearly completed. Just 'a few sensitive documents' they're waiting for.

He has ample experience with those, and thinks they oughtn't to have bothered.

Until he doesn't.

* * *

He comes down late the next day, having spent a restless night tossing and turning, his mind seizing memories and turning them over and over at every angle like a crow with a jewel, like a turnstone on a beach ( _don't think about the birds don't think about them_ ), every laugh and touch and almost-kiss, to see and know if a single one could've been done differently. 

The answer is one of those that he knows, but won't tell even himself. 

He hopes that nobody will notice how out-of-character his tardiness is.

(He knows that none of them quite know him well enough to.)

The last bits are being added to the exhibition, now, and he watches as the remaining boxes are carried in, under the pretense of counting them all up - and then he feels something, deep in his chest, a pull, a forward lean, like a lodestone has been embedded deep in his sternum. Something in that last box is for him, and they are taking it out now. He stumbles forward, a stagger, a leap, measured but jaunty steps like clumsy clockwork. Alison looks up in surprise when she sees him there, absent of the distance he tries to keep between himself and the living, but he simply looks down, scrutinising the item being handled with pale cloth gloves. He envies that carefulness, that the curator has learned it out of reverence rather than fear. 

It is a letter. 

A very, _very_ old one. 

_17th October, 1940-_

'-sent to _us_ from a man in Manchester,' the curator is saying. 'It's addressed here, but it was never sent by the author - no postmark, see? Never even tried to send it. Now, the writer is believed to have passed away in - oh, December of that year? It's difficult to be certain - the documentation of the death was sparse. But his things were sent back to his family, it was his sister who kept them for a good while, in her attic, and they've been passed on through the family ever since. He didn't want to send everything, it's rather personal, of course, but we reached out to a lot of people, and when he found out about the exhibition on the house he thought to send this. Quite rare, you know, there isn't much documentation of it, especially during wartime - and from a lieutenant, too, very few of the troops' mentions of it have survived. Here, let me read you a bit-' 

~~_Dearest Captain_ ~~

_Dearest._

_Dearest T-_

No. 

He doesn't realise that that is a word he's croaked out, rather than a thought in his head, until Alison looks up at him again, and - what _is_ the look on his own face? He can't be sure, but she looks worried, so he has some idea. She glances back at the letter, sees the initial greeting now crossed out, and realisation steals over her face as clearly and brazenly as a photographer over the lawn. 'Can I just get back to you in a sec,' she says to the curator, apologetic smile in place. She's accustomed enough to ghosts incidents intercepting her everyday endeavours that the expression is, by now, a template, a stock image. 'This is fascinating stuff, really, I just - remembered that there was something I had to talk to my husband about, to do with where we're putting these last few cases. Meant to bring it up last night, but you know how it is. You get tired, go to bed early after _Strictly_ , and forget all about it, don't you-' She's gotten good enough at the excuses that she's still spinning this one out even when she's practically left the room. She doesn't stop until they're a good distance away, standing in the ballroom, so as not to be overheard, turning about so suddenly that it's a wonder he doesn't walk through her, skidding to a stop just in time. (What difference would it make, honestly? He already feels sick as a damn dog.)

'What?' She asks, brow furrowed, but only softly - she's not angry. In a strange way, he is both relieved that she isn't and wishing that she was. He's _used_ to responding to anger. 'What is it?'

He can't breathe.

He doesn't need to breathe.

He can't _breathe_ -

'Whoa, whoa, whoa, okay, come on, it's - it's alright,' her hand is outstretched, like she'd meant to touch his shoulder, put a grounding hand on his chest. Underneath it all he finds it nearly touching that she's lived with them for so long, and still clings to that mortal instinct to reach out and touch the incorporeal, to comfort that which cannot be comforted, to reach the unreachable. It's the most human thing about her, and knowing that they all have that is a comfort too, makes him feel more human when he's this tensed and curled-up shivering thing who can't choke out his bloody words-

'It's alright, Cap - _Cap,_ it's al _right_.' The emphasis might be frustration - he's not sure. 'What's wrong?' 

He shakes his head a bit, short, sharp, a roosting, a grounding. 'It's - I-'

'The letter?'

He nods, relieved. 'Yes.'

'Do you not want me to read it?' 

Twitching fingers reach up for his tie, adjusting it, pulling it tight - he always feels it's crooked in moments like this, where he's being observed too keenly. 'I - I don't know. I don't know if - if it's that. I think so? I-'

'Is it - do you not want people looking at the exhibition to see it? Is that it?' 

'Well - I suppose so, maybe, but I can't know that because I _don't even know what the damn thing says._ '

'Oh,' Alison says, and then - ' _Oh.'_ He has known for a long time that she is a lot cleverer than he'd once given her credit for. 'Of course. And if you don't even know what it says, then - well, I suppose you can't be expected to know if you want people seeing it.'

'It's - it feels-' He trails off again. 

'It doesn't feel right that it's been seen and read and turned about by God knows how many people it wasn't meant for when you've never had a chance to look at it yourself.' There's too much understanding in her eyes for someone as young as she is (and technically there's - fifteen years between them? Twenty? But there's age and there's experience, and while the difference in the former is slight, he has - God, technically over a century in the latter, he's been dead seventy five years, after all.) and he has the feeling it has something to do with the fact that she's never spoken about her parents as if they are living.

He nods, again, and then feels like she deserves more than that - in giving him an answer she has given away herself. 'Quite, that's - that's it.' She nods, decisive. 

'I can find a way to make sure you get a look at it, if you want - before the exhibition.'

'And if I don't want it out there?'

Her mouth thins, curls down at the corner, but she doesn't look defeated. 'I'll think of something.'

* * *

Alison waits until the curator has finished putting things in cases, and gone to the kitchen when Mike calls out that he's made tea. Then, tailed by the Captain, she returns to the exhibition room. The letter has been propped up on display, given pride of place, and she stands to the side so that he can see. He looks at her, puzzled, when she doesn't appear to be looking at it at all. 

'You've had enough people see it before you got to,' she says. 'I'm not going to take that away from you too.' Yes, he definitely may cry. 

_17th October, 1940_

~~_Dearest Captain_ ~~

~~_My dearest Ted_ ~~

_Edward,_

_I hope this letter finds you well. I apologise for correspondence being sparse - they have kept us busy over here, which in itself is perhaps the understatement of a lifetime, as I'm sure you know. Once again, I can say little about our progress or lack thereof - as I have explained, it is expressly forbidden. I'm sure you understand, especially after all our running around to stay hushed up about Project -------. All I can say is that the tea is not the fare we took in your office, and the breakfast not at all what Mrs Halterson managed back home - I find myself longing for fresh bacon and eggs. Even a good rich coffee might do - the kind you used to take with your toast after a long evening spent on -------. It is strange how much I miss the smell of it when I never bothered with it back home. I think that perhaps it is because I have come to associate the smell of the coffee with the breakfast table, and the breakfast table with the company who would join me at it - that is to say, you._

_I felt the need to end that sentence by calling you Ted. May I, sir? I suppose that the answer to that is linked, in a way, to the answer of the question I am attempting to ask._

_I am asking if my fondness for your company is requited._

_Fondness is not the right word either, it would seem. Fondness is what you feel for the local grumpy stray when it lets you feed it bits of kipper and rub behind its ears. It is what you feel for something that sparks affection in the moment, and only a brief sense of displacement when it is gone again before you recover, and resume normal life. That is not what you are to me._

_I suppose, then, that I am asking if you had gotten used to me in the way I had gotten used to you. That is - in the way where you do not recover, after the thing you had become accustomed to has left. This wording is selfish, just as the use of 'fondness' was inadequate. (You may not agree, but I suppose that in a way the strength of my feelings is done greater credit by my inability to express them here. ) Of course I do not wish for you to still be sat alone every morning as you once were, apart from the rest of the eleven (ten? eleven? Perhaps don't tell me about my replacement in response to a letter such as this one.) but simultaneously I can't bring myself to wish you to have moved on, to have filled the space I was vacating as easily as the next cloud covers the sun when the first one drifts off. A gloomy analogy, to be sure, but despite what ought to have been a happy declaration, thinking on what I've left behind is making me gloomy, so - I suppose this is what you are getting._

_I had a near miss today, a bullet that almost hit me, and not in a place I might have recovered from easily. Sergeant Morgan was the unlucky chosen, instead, and I am awfully sorry for it - he played the mouth organ for us all in the evenings, and he was jolly good at it. It has given me some perspective. Next time, it might be one with my own name on it after all. And if it is then I would rather that you know than wonder. The latter is far more painful than the former, despite what people say, as I have been finding out here, not knowing if you miss me as I miss you. If you knew me as intimately as I might have liked to know you. I like to think you did. You do._

_To put it concisely, as you have so often said is one of my good attributes - I nearly died today, and I may die tomorrow, and I will probably die within the year. I am sorry for that, and for not mincing my words, but I know you are annoyed by dilly-dallying and tootling about._

_The knowledge of the speed at which a bullet travels is hastening the speed of my confession._

_I love you. Ted. I love you. I would come into the breakfast hall in the morning and see you drinking your over-stewed, overpriced coffee that always drips a bit from your moustache no matter how carefully you sip from the mug and I wonder what the bloody hell (excuse me) I was supposed to do without you. The answer is - nothing. Aside from work, from combat, I have done nothing without you. There is nothing to do. I remember the time I had with you, I write and rewrite letters to you, then don't send them, I sit with the other troops and talk about nothing worthwhile because I am too busy remembering sitting and discussing nothing worthwhile with you instead. It is likely not healthy, of course - but what exactly is, in this godforsaken war? I am tired, and I miss you, and I adore you, and it may drive you away but stuck out here I can't have you either way. So this is my telling you, before it is too late._

_I hope to God that I manage to make myself send this._

_Always your faithful Lieutenant,_

_William._

* * *

That is where it ends, and thus that is where he realises that he's shaking. He hasn't taken a breath the entire time.

_He loved me_

~~_He was fond of you_ ~~

_He loved me_

~~_He didn't even send it, he changed his mind_ ~~

_He loved me_

~~_He was on the front lines, he was frightened and confused_ ~~

'He -'

He can't say it.

Alison figures it out anyway. Tilts her head, looks worried again. It feels nice, almost, to have someone worry about him. It's been long enough.

'I'm sorry.'

He smiles, rueful. 'So am I.'

'And you never - never saw him again?' 

He shakes his head, once, sharply. 'No.' 

Alison looks - rather devastated, actually. 'Oh - oh _god_. Was it - was it who I think it is? Your lieutenant?' 

The look on his face tells her the answer, and he knows it. The determined look comes back to her face.

'I'll find a way to stop visitors looking at it.'

'How?'

'Somehow.'

* * *

That night, he cannot sleep again. Occasion becomes pattern becomes habit, it would seem. 

But this time it isn't the thoughts, although the thoughts are there, although they twist and race around his mind like the hare imbued with lead shot. 

_There's a hare. Pomp-pomp!_

_There's a hare. **Oh, really? Where?** Behind that clump of grass there. **Here - pass my bins back a moment.** ~~The soft scrape of brushing skin like page edges touching as the binoculars are handed back~~ **Oh! Yes! There he is.** There you are. **What?** What?_

No. It's the pulling, in his chest. It's still there. After reading the letter, it had gone away - for quite some time, actually. But then, at 1800 hours - it had begun to come back. Slowly, gradually, but certainly there. Going back to the letter a bit might have solved it, of course - but he couldn't. Can't. So he just lies there, in his room, where they both once stood and said goodbye and didn't say everything else. There is a reason he did not bagsy this room.

The pulling seems to be getting stronger, and he cannot fathom _how_ \- surely for that the letter would have to be getting closer. But stronger it does indeed get, and he's becoming rather sick of it all. He sighs, giving up on maintaining his usual stubbornness - which he _can_ admit he has, thank you very much - and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. 

All the lights are out - when the last Lady Button was alive there were always a few on, she'd found the dark unnerving in her old age, but Alison is always thinking of the electricity bills - but that doesn't seem to matter so much to them. He remembers from being alive that if he stepped into a dark room, after a few minutes pitch black would turn to charcoal would turn to dove grey or deep blue, depending on the windows, the outside lighting, the time. Adjusting to the dark looked like when Alison and Mike's television set goes from static to a clear picture. Now, though, their eyes seem to stay adjusted permanently. They seem to embrace the night, to always be dogging its heels, clinging to the hem of its cloak, sheltering in its shade. It makes sense, in a way - for those still living night is perhaps the closest thing they can acquaint with death. No wonder the dead hug its legs as it wanders on until dawn.

Even if this had not been the case, he knows these corridors intimately, both from five years as the C.O of the house and seventy-five years as a ghost of it. 

That is how he knows that the figure at the end of the corridor is not one of the suits of armour. 

The pulling in his chest feels as though the lodestone is trying to yank itself free. Like another magnet is being held to his back, repelling the first one, pushing him forwards. It feels as though if he doesn't do as this feeling says, he'll die a second time. As though he already knows that figure intimately, and oughtn't to deny it any longer.

And so, naturally, he bolts.

He doesn't go back to his room - considering he's just come out of it there'd be no hiding, and they can pass through doors, so there is no physical barrier that can be used. However, the house is big, and he can hope that if he finds somewhere for a bit and then keeps moving around he won't be found. He puts the years of morning runs to good use, tumbles down stairs and around corners, until he reaches the ballroom. Two minutes thirty.

When they trained together he was always beaten. Havers was two twenty-two.

The figure is already there.

He doesn't understand how light works for them, why it still highlights them, shows their finer details. But he is grateful it does, because that is how he knows that it is Havers standing in front of him.

(Lie. That's a lie. He knew already. In the corridor. On the bed. When this pulling feeling started in the first place. He's _known_ for longer than he's known, and he's known for longer than he's told himself he has. Much like other things he could speak of, but won't.)

He doesn't need the midnight monochrome to go away in order to know that Havers' hair is still combed to the side as always, that his eyes are lighter than his hair and darker than his tea. That if he were smiling just now he would have dimples, and although perfectly white his teeth would be very slightly crooked. That he wanted to be a vet, and didn't get to. That Havers took him birding on Hampstead Heath, and the Captain wanted to kiss him on the mouth.

That they, apparently, love each other very much. Or - did. He doesn't know if things have changed for Havers, does he. 

'You,' he chokes out, once he manages to get his vocal cords to cooperate.

 _There's_ the smile. Dimples. Teeth.

'Me.'

**Author's Note:**

> For any heathens who didn't know what I was on about with the downton abbey film it messes him up because (SPOILERS AHEAD) the butler of the house and one of the royal valets get together and they're very sweet and lovely but unfortunately cap is repressed-pining and they do not help him.


End file.
